Quest for Glory III: Wages of War

Friday, August 11, 2017

Platforms:

PC

Publisher:

Sierra On-Line

Developer:

Sierra On-Line

Genres:

Adventure / Point and Click

Release Date:

1992

Game Modes:

Singleplayer

Wages of War is more than a marginal improvement for the Quest for Glory series. On the technical side the game has finally received an SVGA makeover, making it look infinitely better than its predecessor. The interface is more user-friendly as well (the text parser has been dropped), and the game now uses an overhead map when traveling through the landscape. The game is still an engaging adventure that blends traditional King’s Quest puzzle-centric gameplay with role-playing.

This time the action is set on Fricana, a land patterned heavily after the real-life Africa, with the large city of Tarna surrounded by smaller Simbadi tribal villages, all on the brink of war. Your job, naturally, is to find out what’s going on and perhaps defuse the situation. Interacting with other characters is still a central part of the adventure, but traveling through the savanna and finding remote villages and other secrets is perhaps just as important.

A large overhead map spanning several screens makes traveling less confusing. Random encounters are still a thing, however, and this time you can’t just ‘run away’ from a threat – monsters keep chasing you indefinitely until you confront them. You’ll encounter more dangerous monsters depending on where and when you’re traveling – the farther away from civilization you are, the more nasty creatures you find. But traveling through the game world long enough could reward you with a random easter egg or two!.

When all is said and done, Wages of War is a high quality adventure that is fairly typical of Quest for Glory games. It has enough differences to make it worthwhile – none of them superfluously radical – but still retains that charm that made the first two games such memorable classics.